someone interested in packaging VirtualBox?

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Sun, Feb 24, 2008 at 12:40:43PM -0600, Les Mikesell wrote:
> Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
> >
> >>>It should use the KVM module driver, and if the current functionality in
> >>>>KVM is not sufficient then VirtualBox should work with upstream to 
> >>>>address
> >>>>the limitations. Having multiple kernel modules for virtualization does
> >>>>not help anyone.
> >>>>
> >>>Well, that would be quite a challenge.
> >>Especially on x86 32-bit processors that KVM doesn't support... Or for 
> >>people who want the option of moving their virtual machines to a windows 
> >>host.  The functionality doesn't seem the same at all.
> >
> >I didn't say it was easy - just that if you ever want VirtualBox to be a
> >part of the mainstream Fedora kernels it is going to have to stop 
> >duplicating
> >functionality already present & work with Linux kernel developers. What
> >VirtualBox does for kernel drivers on Windows is utterly irrelevant & need
> >not share any code with the Linux support, nor mandate what the Linux
> >support looks like.
> 
> And what you are saying here is irrelevant to people who want their 
> virtual machines to be portable.  KVM simply isn't useful to them and 
> you make fedora less useful as well by not including virtualbox. 

That's a very short term view. History has shown time & agin that betting
on technology that is not in the mainline kernel brings severe long term
maintainence pain which is not sustainable. Most spectacularly this is
demonstrated by the Xen kernels. Including Xen in Fedora gave us some
short term wins, but it has been a HUGE timesink diverting valuable
resources from more useful development efforts. KVM would be alot further
forward were it not for the resources spent keeping out-of-tree Xen kernels
working. 

Dan.
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